He should have sued Oracle too.
Paul Allen Sues Apple, Others Over Patents
71–77 of 77 posts
Re: Paul Allen Sues Apple, Others Over Patents
#72This is the problem with Patent troll "portfolio companies" like his: It doesn't make anything, so there can never be a countersuit with protective patents. So, even if we had IBM step in with its portfolio of 30,000 patents (and growing by 5000 each year) and snarl up the entire industry to prove a point, Allen would be like "whatever" and soldier on, because he makes nothing.
disclaimer- I'm against software patents in general. However, in this case, to argue against my own opinions: The research and resultant patents in this case were in the public record for all to see, read, and if they found the idea useable, free to contact the patent holder to discuss a deal. The patent systems a broken mess - no argument here. But a firm that actually did research on specific items, kept track of a…
Take your not-so-much-of-a-troll company and allow them to hire not only researcher-employees, but also researcher-independent-contractors. Are they more trollish now? If not, what if some of their researchers band together to lower their insurance costs and improve their tax situation; they establish their own contracting firm which the not-a-troll company pays to supply researchers. Finally, what if this contracting firm works on a part-time or short-term basis with many companies who want research done?
The problem with trolling is not that properties that can be sold and monetized by the new owner. It is that ideas are being treated as (material) property. Ideas can be formed by multiple persons independently, and any given idea can be shared among any number of thinkers without diminishing the strength of the thought. In particular, you can have submarine patents that nobody realizes they're infringing until the day the troll emerges from under his bridge to tell the whole world to pay up. Or, one can be granted a patent on an idea that's actually quite common and obvious, and this patent can back up a threat of costly and risky litigation, effecting the coercive transfer of money from productive members of society to patent-system-abusers.
Innovators need access to scarce material goods and they have limited lifetimes, but extending our effective scheme for managing scarce resources to the ideas they develop is not working so well.
Re: Paul Allen Sues Apple, Others Over Patents
#73someone should patent being a litigious prick
Haliburton tried: http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2008/11/junk-patents.html
Halliburton specifically disclaimed any intent of actually using the patent against anyone but trolls - see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1608302
Re: Paul Allen Sues Apple, Others Over Patents
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Is that really true? Yes. Or more precisely because clothes and food are too "utilitarian". "Lessons from fashion's free culture" http://ca.ted.com/talks/johanna_blakley_lessons_from_fashion... "Copyright law's grip on film, music and software barely touches the fashion industry ... and fashion benefits in both innovation and sales, says Johanna Blakley."
So then music, software, books, etc. - all requiring low capital, should be in the same realm of fashion - right? If you don't believe that's true: please compare capital of an industrial bakery to a software company of the same revenue/profit.
The important distinction between fashion and software is that clothing is useless unless properly manufactured. The materials and manufacturing process are an integral part of the final product. To duplicate a garment is to reverse engineer it, source the materials, and then remarket it as a knock-off, or as some imitation item under another brand.
Fashion doesn't need strict copyright enforcement because by the time you've reverse engineered something and put it into production, it's already wildly out of date.
You can see how Apple applies this principle to their main products, aggressively innovating so that by the time their products are copied, which is inevitable, they have already obsoleted them.
Software can be duplicated at effectively zero cost to produce an identical copy. It also has a much longer lifespan for mature packages (Office, XP, etc.), where people will use the same software, plus or minus patches, for five years or more.
There needs to be some kind of reasonable limitation on what people are able to do with software that they purchase, so at the very least a form of copyright is required, not unlike protections offered to books.
The real thorn is that software patents are mostly preposterous, with very few requiring actual innovation to produce. It's like trying to patent a plot twist or a character quirk and then suing all authors that use it.
Re: Paul Allen Sues Apple, Others Over Patents
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Sad to see him become a Patent troll. Yes, quite. Paul Allen had an excellent reputation up to this point. He always struck me as the one with the interesting projects, such as backing Burt Rutan. > Some of them will surely fight back. all of them will fight back.
Maybe he is trying to destroy the patent system. If you have valid patents that read on various valuable products, and you can bank roll a credible law suit asking for injunctions and not accepting any other kind of relief , that might create enough chaos to get the attention of law makers.
Can you patent patents and then sue the patent office for patent violation? I hope so.
Re: Paul Allen Sues Apple, Others Over Patents
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "The only one missing from that list is Microsoft" FTA: "Notably missing from the defendants' list are Microsoft, in which Mr. Allen remains a major investor"
That was the point. Wonder if microsoft has a deal with Allen or if he just doesn't want to sue the company he has a stake in. This could easily be spun as Allen as the attack dog against microsofts competition.
If I had to guess, it's because he doesn't want to sue a company he has a stake in. That's like suing yourself. Patent and intellectual property copyright is a funny thing; the owner can enforce (or try to get it enforced) when they feel like it. They usually let it go when it's to their benefit.
Re: Paul Allen Sues Apple, Others Over Patents
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
So then music, software, books, etc. - all requiring low capital, should be in the same realm of fashion - right? If you don't believe that's true: please compare capital of an industrial bakery to a software company of the same revenue/profit.
The important distinction between fashion and software is that clothing is useless unless properly manufactured. The materials and manufacturing process are an integral part of the final product. To duplicate a garment is to reverse engineer it, source the materials, and then remarket it as a knock-off, or as some imitation item under another brand. Fashion doesn't need strict copyright enforcement because by the tim…
Copywright != patent
copyright protects the expression of an idea, while a patent protects the idea itself